Programmable Do-Gooders, Valerie Lueth

Exhibition Label:
"Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature & Culture," Mar-2009, Steve Goddard
Leuth describes her etching of two robots standing on either side of a family tree:

“Programmable Do-Gooders envisions a soft technology, used not as a catastrophic killing machine, but as a means to radiate and propagate love and goodwill. The dueling robots have ornately patterned, complex exteriors that serve to confuse their motives at first glance-their barrel-like ammo arms preparing to shoot hearts, not bullets. The maze-like tree nestled in the center of the cracking earth commemorates the roots of the robots’ imagined lineage and celebrates a connectivity of their lives to natural rhythms (forged on the earth from earthen materials) despite their being fabricated and purposed by human beings.”